Dancing About Architecture, the Early Days

If Xgau had died in 1981 no one would give a shit about him today.

Presumably the '70s book would still have come to light, and that's the one that means the most to me.

If Xgau had died in 1981 no one would give a shit about him today.

Does anybody who's not a music writer give a shit about him today?

I'm quite sure he has lots of old Voice readers who still check his MSN column regularly. Not writers, but people who've been reading him for decades. Old habits, etc.

gonna say, i'm amazed what a lively nerdtastic comments section he seems to have

There does seem to be a lot of writers and people who know him in there, but probably not all of them. ILM's Thus Sang Freud was a regular at one point.

Does anybody who's not a music writer give a shit about him today?

The thing is, there's nothing wrong with having your legacy be a readership that's mostly people who are in the field. In fact, it's quite a nice thing to have.

(And, of course, a lot more people are sort of "in the field" now via things like ILM or people's blogs, etc.)

I think that means a lot less when your field is entirely about another field. I think a lot more musicians were influenced by Bangs via Creem, but then I've never met anyone IRL who mentioned xgau. I guess it's a NY thing?

whatever gets you through the nights of incessant xgau jabber on ilx

xgau never had a print home in the uk afaik, but his name at least is familiar to britishes rockfans of certain age thanks to 'Take No Prisoners' (and his 70s record guide was fairly widely available as an import)

Didn't see this in time to vote, but I'll say briefly why I would have chosen xgau: his 70s Guide. As the post-Woodstock music biz was finding a way to ride and exploit the rising tide of mass bohemianism etc, the extended range of acceptable sounds, xgau also adapted, by extending the range of his voice as a writer. Some of his earlier ruminations (preserved on his site) slogged and droned, but the Guide compressed and crystalized his insighrs and assbites. Sometimes they organized impressions/suspicions/hopes I already had (Bangs) sometimes took a leap (Meltzer)(imagine xgau with one of those guys in the weirdly intimate Voice line-edit, which could be more like a character-edit in my experience). Bangs' writing was a feast, but sometimes a surfeit, like "Why should I bother listening to this platter, Bangs already served it up!" Also, seems like Christgau had more of a range as a listener than these other guys, though he never has had much use for metal. It helps that my taste seem to be similar to his (I've heard most of the records in the 70s Guide). Oh yeah, this was when he also had a much wider range of grades than later, examining a range of failures--as one musician said of another, "I didn't know you could make some of those mistakes!"

Even the long-ass early stuff could be first-rate when he was more the journalist; he's always been good at that.

yeah i used to post more on that xgau comment section. discovered i wasn't learning or laughing as much as i do here. they're smart guys but there's sort of a tribal mindset. or who knows, it's hard to generalize. i voted xgau tho.

"other" Nik Cohn, Rock From The Beginning, also published under other titles, as it should be , because it's not some blah-blah chronology, it's his own first-second gen.,still youthful lust for kicks, fed by Little Richard and Johnnie Ray, PJ Proby and Phil Spector, for instance. He can art-appreciate Bard Dylan, "and if he killed the thing I loved, well, that was hardly his fault." Nick Tosches, Country, both editions. Reminds me, the second edition of Mystery Train is where Marcus does truthfully deal with the later careers of his heroes. I'd like to read his Dead Elvis too. Loved Frith's Letter From Britain columns in Creem; are they in any of his books?

It's really weird, and a little scary, the extent to which the tastes/favorite music of people posting comments on that Expert Witness blog all seem to so slavishly mimic Christgau's tastes and favorites. I'm a longtime fan of his writing, obviously, but have always thought he's been wrong about all sorts of things (and right, metal is way up there. Though personally I'd say he has too much use for "indie culture" these days.) I've never understood the mindset that says critics can only be good if you agree with them most of the time, though.

Yeah, he def got me into some stuff I never would have even listened to otherwise. And one thing (maybe the only thing) I'll always like Paul Williams for (other than providing Crawdaddy as a home for more insightful writers, readers, listeners): his collection Outlaw Blues includes a very congenial late-60s conversation with a guy who says the last time he listened to "A Day In The Life", he started laughing; like, "Oh wow, is the record gonna blow up." Just over the horizon: Creemster apostates like Greg Shaw calling for and recognizing the return and extension of rock as pop (don't remember if Shaw in particular liked the Dolls, but Creem sure did).

Got me to *check out* some stuff I never would have etc., that is.

But Dylan Hicks is mostly nerf, and while xgau had to learn to love Ned Sublette's solo guitar, that's what really immediately grabbed me about Kiss You Down South. But I'm very glad he led to me to it. Also, still hate the icons in the 90s Guide; does he do that as much now?

You mean those goofy turkeys and bombs and useless waste-of-space "neithers" or whatever they were? I don't think so. Only positive reviews (and occasional honorable mentions maybe) nowadays, as far as I can tell.

But I don't read him anywhere near as religiously as I used to (and had to, for several years there, as part of my job). Have the site bookmarked, but weeks can go by without me thinking to click on it. And when I do, I often just quickly glance, at reviews and comments both.

Bring back the Turkey Shoot!

That was an antidote to the Gift-Giving Guides, the giftee-burning kind we get elsewhere this time of year.

It's really weird, and a little scary, the extent to which the tastes/favorite music of people posting comments on that Expert Witness blog all seem to so slavishly mimic Christgau's tastes and favorites. I'm a longtime fan of his writing, obviously, but have always thought he's been wrong about all sorts of things (and right, metal is way up there. Though personally I'd say he has too much use for "indie culture" these days.) I've never understood the mindset that says critics can only be good if you agree with them most of the time, though.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, December 11, 2012 11:58 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wonder if there's anyone in the world who's listened to a Wussy album but hasn't read Christgau

also missed the vote, and would've voted bangs. he has his faults, undoubtedly (some of which he addressed in his later writing, fwiw), but he can be so exhilarating and entertaining in full flight (thinking specifically the piece about playing saxophone at his landlady, White Noise Supremacists, his piece about Electric Miles in the second collection, the Metal Machine Music pieces).

Yeah, and his vision of the vision of the Godz was so compelling (and cautionary: pointed out that trurly inspired primitivism is hard t achieve). Good thing I didn't actually hear those records 'til way later, though; I might not have done what I done in between.

I wonder how different the experience of reading that Bangs' collection back in the late 80s would have been if I could have streamed all the music he was writing about instantly.

(xpost) It occurred to me that I had never, ever heard the Godz. Now I have, and they're nothing at all like what I always envisioned (which wasn't good, which is why I never went searching for any of their records). I'll have to go back now and read what Bangs had to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJabNnPOVQU

wow, i completely missed this poll. i would've voted marcus, who's been an embarrassingly huge influence on my life and tastes since discovering 'mystery train' at 15 (and 'lipstick traces' about a year later), even if i don't care about most of the stuff he's been writing about for the last 20 (30?) years. bangs i haven't read in about a decade, but he's classic forever for the 'astral weeks' piece which would just be a gorgeous, wrenching piece of writing even if he'd made up the album he was writing about. i suspect i'd rather reread him than any of the beats. xgau's a blind spot for me -- i like some of his longer essays. my experience with meltzer's similar to strongo's -- he seemed amazing when i first discovered him but he's such a one-note writer, every single one of his pieces reads exactly the same to me and his passive-aggressive dick attitude doesn't help.

Have you seen the Marcus interview book, J.D.? It includes the rockcritics.com e-mail thing from 10 years ago, so we're both in there (at least I think it's you). I actually haven't seen it yet. I wish the guy had used my Marcus interview from '86--because I was just starting and had no clue what I was doing, I asked him about stuff you normally would never see Marcus hold court on (Anita Baker, Janet Jackson, the Jesus & Mary Chain).

just googled it and you're right, i am! i can't help but wish i'd asked a better question, haha. i'm pretty sure i've seen the interview you did -- was it the one where he called REM 'the most boring band ever'?

Yes--he changed his mind after "Losing My Religion," which, oddly enough, I consider a huge bore.

marsh is kind of the odd man out here -- does he still actually write? he really does seem to belong to another time -- even rolling stone doesn't really write about bands with the kind of intense (almost uptight) seriousness that he did. he just always seemed so angry, even when he was writing about stuff that he liked. my high school library had a couple of his books, and i have fond memories of going through that '1,001 best singles ever' book and vowing to track them all down. (which really did seem like a tolkien-level task back in the days when there was no napster et al and the only ways to get new music were $16.99 CDs at sam goody and mixtapes from friends. i must've read about how awesome 'be my baby' was for at least two years before i actually got to hear it.)

The lack of British critics on this list is a shame, but it's not like their work is available online anywhere. Does the work of the notorious "hip young gunslingers" Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill still hold up after 30 years? HOW DO YOU KNOW????

i tracked down 'the boy looked at johnny' long ago and no, it doesn't really hold up as writing or criticism, tho it's a pretty endearing time-capsule. it's funny to stumble on a julie burchill piece from time to time (like that horrible trans-phobic column she wrote the other day) and realize that her voice and attitude haven't changed at all since she was 19 and writing hilariously unfair things about the clash.

It's a good book - a period piece and with hindsight lots to criticise about it, but also funny, idiocyncratic, passionate etc. A funny thing is that their proposal for way forward is the Tom Robinson Band!

My first encounter with any of these guys, apart from stray record reviews I may have read without paying attention to who wrote them, was Greil Marcus, because he did his Real-Life Rock Top 10 in Salon in the late '90s, when I was in college. His interest in drawing connections between disparate pop-culture artifacts, and in relating them to their sociocultural contexts, made a distinct impression on me. I read and enjoyed his Double Trouble (2000), since much of it was about the decade I'd just lived through, but I realized I didn't have much interest in his writing on earlier cultural figures/scenes to which I had less of a connection. (I was a music lover but not really a rock-canon guy.)

When I discovered ILM and got more serious about music and criticism, I came to appreciate Xgau's Consumer Guide reviews (though I rarely checked out his archives). I also admired bits and pieces of Carburetor Dung -- I particularly liked learning of Bangs's fondness for Kraftwerk and Anne Murray. I was always intrigued by Meltzer, but maybe mostly because of the title The Aesthetics of Rock; every time I flipped open the book at a store, it seemed like post-Beat logorrhea. Still haven't read him. Marsh, either.

In general, my reluctance to engage with a lot of old-school rock critics comes from a sense -- as reductive as it probably is -- that they're really invested in the Importance of Rock, as either a personal ethos or an intellectual project. I don't entirely blame them; I'm sure a lot of what motivated early rock criticism was a desire to elevate popular music within the cultural conversation. But by the time I started paying attention, that battle had already been won. Furthermore, what shaped me most as a music fan was early '90s pop and late '90s indie rock, and both suggested musical landscapes beyond, and often in opposition to, the traditional rock-and-roll narratives.

This poll is missing the guy whose review for Metal Machine Music was the word "NO!" repeated 100 times.

I've written about this before, possibly even on this thread, but I think Marcus's "Real Life" column was at its best in the Voice in the mid-'80s. (I never saw the original incarnation in New West.) He was writing a lot about the likes of the Mekons and Elvis Costello and Pussy Galore, but he was placing them side-by-side with Eddie Money and Timex Social Club and "I Want to Know What Love Is" (and Something Wild, and lots else). He still paid close attention to pop hits on the radio, which, as he has said himself, he no longer did once any semblance of a Top 40 format fell by the wayside. If you don't know, the column has been in The Believer the past three years or so--finding it in Toronto isn't easy, so I only see it now and again. Excerpts are online each month, but I don't remember to check regularly.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201301/?read=column_marcus

Marcus's next book: The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1839470

Nothing too surprising--I've never heard, or heard of, "Guitar Drag"--except "Shake Some Action." I don't think I've ever come across a single mention of it anywhere from Marcus. I'll buy the book solely for that.

Don't see a Marcus review of "Guitar Drag" online, but I see that its this Christian Marclay thing

Over the last decade, Marclay has created ambitious work in a variety of media. The video Guitar Drag (2000) features a Fender Stratocaster being dragged behind a pick-up truck along rough country roads in Texas. While on one level the work is an expression of Marclay’s interest in creating a new sound, it is also a nod to the guitar-destroying antics of rock stars as well as a reference to the murder of James Byrd, an African-American man dragged to his death behind a pickup truck

http://whitecube.com/artists/christian_marclay/

tosches really belonged in this poll. anyway strongo's response to meltzer: "the mix of massive self-congratulation and total resentment and weird self-pity radiating off of every sentence" is why i like the guy so much i think.

like all the writers we're discussing here are very performative, very much about this move from 'writing about music' to 'rockwrite' and trying to push on what that might mean or how that might work. meltzer pushed it further and felt the limits first i think. he fought against his shtick even as he developed it, so he stays freshest to me, funniest, hardest to in any sense 'grow out of'.

From Raul Sandelin, who did the Bangs documentary a year or two ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ1isHKPHbA

I imagine some of it will be unbearable* and some of it will be great. (Just watching the trailer, it's the first time I've put faces to at least five or six of those names.) Marcus gets mentioned, but I don't actually see him anywhere, unless he flashed by quickly and I missed it.

*An exaggeration, but what I mean are things like Andy Shernoff saying image became everything with MTV, and music wasn't the most important thing anymore. As if image wasn't hugely important since...day one, probably.

Not to mention that Andy/Adny Shernoff was in the Dictators, and they seemed just a little image-conscious.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61P18cEICJL.jpg

Good point. Dow also mentioned the movie here:

Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Haven't had a chance to listen yet, but Scott Woods has an interview up with Richard Goldstein, who was one of a handful of people who actually predated these guys.

http://rockcritics.com/2015/06/24/richard-goldstein-podcast-interview/

Hope to read the book over the summer.